The five-year agreement is designed to promote cooperation in survey-based research methodology, technology, and new research initiatives. Both institutions will jointly seek to develop a sample survey infrastructure to support academically rigorous social science research in India.

U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, SRC Director William Axinn and Shekhar Shah, Director-General of NCAER, signed the agreement this month in New Delhi.

“This partnership will not only expands our global engagement and extends our global network of long-term partners,” says Axinn. “It also gives us the opportunity to globalize our educational work and advance the social sciences through comparisons across different contexts and settings. Globalization in general, and work in India specifically, will help us to build new approaches, methods, and tools that advance the social sciences worldwide.

“We hope this partnership also assists NCAER in their mission to provide evidence-based evaluation of public policy and program initiatives to improve the lives of the Indian people.”

Other ISR researchers joining Axinn in the U-M delegation to India included Narayan Sastry, David Weir, Beth-Ellen Pennell and Ellen Compernolle.

The ISR Survey Research Center is a global leader in interdisciplinary survey-based research, teaching and training. SRC conducts some of the most widely cited and influential studies in the world, including the Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Monitoring the Future Study, and the Health and Retirement Study.

NCAER has conducted surveys on consumer behavior since the mid-1960s and its Rural Economic and Demographic Surveys have been used by scholars and policymakers all over the world. More recently, NCAER has mounted the India Human Development Surveys, which will provide the first national longitudinal panel data set for India.

Other joint initiatives may include establishing a survey research laboratory at NCAER to test and advance new approaches for social science research and train professionals in state-of-the-art, survey-based research methods. These cooperative activities are expected to benefit NCAER, University of Michigan faculty and students, and the larger empirical research community in India.

Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world’s largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and educating researchers and students from around the world. For more information, visit the ISR Web site at http://home.isr.umich.edu

The National Council of Applied Economic Research is India’s oldest and largest independent economic think tank, set up in 1956 to inform policy choices for both the public and private sectors.